<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2019 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'The operation has been completed',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/02/07.jpg" alt="Vas deferens segments on gauss in gloved hands" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I&apos;d arrived at the clinic for my vasectomy, and found I&apos;d arrived twenty minutes before my scheduled appointment.
		That wasn&apos;t too bad, but for some reason, I thought I was lucky to be there on time, and thought I should have arrived earlier.
		But then I checked the clock again and realised I&apos;d misread it.
		I&apos;d actually arrived three hours and twenty minutes early!
		That was way too early.
		It&apos;s a common problem in dreams though that clocks won&apos;t stay consistent with what time they display.
		I probably didn&apos;t misread it; it just changed on me.
		I didn&apos;t realise I was dreaming though, and didn&apos;t consider that possibility.
	</p>
	<p>
		For whatever reason, I didn&apos;t dream much about the actual procedure.
		Apparently, the vasectomy came with a gratis groin tattoo though, and I&apos;d chosen a chess board, and it was to be put on my upper groin and lower belly.
		I questioned my decision in getting this tattoo, looked at the others that were offered and picked out a different option.
		But then I realised that image, unlink a basic chess board, was probably copyrighted, so I opted not to get the tattoo at all.
		It was just too permanent, and I wasn&apos;t sure I&apos;d like it.
		I still got the vasectomy, but as I said, I didn&apos;t actually dream that part and didn&apos;t see how it was performed.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve always known I was never going to have children.
		Even back in elementary school, I&apos;d already decided this.
		Unlike the tattoo, the decision not to have children has not been at all a rushed one, so while the decision to go through with the vasectomy actually was a bit rushed, I have no reason to regret it unless it doesn&apos;t work out and I end up with a child anyway.
		At that point, I might regret the vasectomy, as without it, I would have had the sense to avoid relationships with females and could never have gotten one pregnant.
		But if all goes well, there&apos;s nothing to change my mind about later.
		My course has long been set.
	</p>
	<p>
		Afterwards, I scheduled something, though I&apos;m not sure what.
		It might have been the post-vasectomy semen test.
		I nearly forgot to jot it down in my planner, but I remembered before I left the clinic.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		In what I read today, it is prophesied that the Book of Mormon will come to be.
		The only problem?
		That prophesy is itself only in the Book of Mormon!
		You can make whatever claims you want about a book you&apos;re in the process of writing while you write it.
		Secondly, this is supposedly prophesied by Joseph.
		Is that ... bible Joseph?
		If so, why is that not in the bible instead of the Book of Mormon?
		If this is in fact bible Joseph, it&apos;s a pretty good sign this book&apos;s author, one Joseph Smith, was just trying to shoehorn this book into the religion.
		Hmm ... Joseph Smith ...
		Maybe that&apos;s the Joseph, actually, not bible Joseph.
		Maybe this chapter wasn&apos;t one that was supposedly translated from the plates, but instead an account from Joseph Smith.
		That still means he&apos;s prophesying his own book though.
		That&apos;s not a very impressive feat of future vision.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="vasectomy">
	<h2>Vasectomy</h2>
	<p>
		This morning, I finally opened the box of that cleanser the surgeon told me to clean my groin with on the day of the surgery.
		It looks like it does in fact have a generic name, clearly printed on the bottle within the box.
		It&apos;s Chlorhexidine Gluconate.
		Or rather, it&apos;s a 4% solution of Chlorhexidine Gluconate.
		That same generic name is actually on the box too, though I guess I was too rushed to notice it when I bought it.
		Also, the bottle specifically warns that you shouldn&apos;t use it on your genitals.
		I did it anyway, because the surgeon told me too, but also put the bottle in my purse to remind me once I arrived to bring that up with the surgeon.
	</p>
	<p>
		I also suddenly remembered this morning that surgical pins tend to have individual serial numbers and databases that allows knowers of those serial numbers to look up who the patient is, as well as where and when the pin was inserted.
		Do the clamps added to one&apos;s body during a vasectomy have serial numbers as well?
		The surgeon told me before that they didn&apos;t have to add the clamps if I was concerned about them, so it wasn&apos;t too late to ask.
	</p>
	<p>
		It seems the Chlorhexidine Gluconate isn&apos;t safe for frequent use on genitals, but it&apos;s fine for use before a surgery.
		As for the clamps, the surgeon verified that they have no serial numbers, so that wasn&apos;t something to worry about.
		I also asked further about why the surgery is performed the way it is.
		The outer tube of the vas deferens is slit, and a section of the inner tube is removed.
		Some of the outer tube is used to cover the end of the cut inner tube on one side, so when it heals together, there&apos;s a blockage that prevents sperm from mixing with the rest of the semen.
		However, from what I understand, the outer tube is otherwise pretty much left alone.
		If the inner tube doesn&apos;t stay covered completely, the sperm can travel out the end of the inner tube, use the outer tube as a guiding path, and reach the other end of the inner tube, allowing them to reach the semen.
		I didn&apos;t quite understand the surgeon&apos;s reasoning, but it sounded like there was in fact a good reason, so I just moved on.
	</p>
	<p>
		One of the assistants mentioned that some people don&apos;t shave prior to this procedure, despite having been asked to just as I was.
		Then, the assistants end up shaving them anyway, as it&apos;s necessary for the safety and ease of the operation, so they don&apos;t get to keep their hair anyway.
		That&apos;s idiotic.
		But to make matters worse, it seems patients usually don&apos;t read the pre-op instructions at all, let alone try to follow them as best they can.
		They&apos;re getting their bodies modified.
		Don&apos;t they care if that goes well?
		It&apos;s not like they&apos;re dealing with a glass cup and if they aren&apos;t careful, they&apos;ll break it and throw it away.
		This is their bodies, and if they mess things up, they may cause themselves suffering.
		I read over those instructions countless times, just trying to make sure I didn&apos;t do anything wrong.
		Apparently, some of these people come in without having showered for days, too.
		Even if the pre-op instructions didn&apos;t specifically instruct me to shower daily for three days prior to the surgery, I already shower daily.
		That&apos;s just good hygiene.
	</p>
	<p>
		The surgeon told me when we last spoke that they&apos;d ask what I was here for, and that I should respond &quot;permanent sterilisation&quot;, showing that I&apos;m aware this is permanent and I want it anyway.
		But I&apos;ve had over a month to think about this and come up with a good response, so when they asked today, I responded that I was here to end my bloodline through permanent sterilisation.
		I mean, let&apos;s be honest.
		I wasn&apos;t getting sterilised because I have enough children or something.
		I was getting sterilised to take myself out of the gene pool entirely.
		If I ever have children, they won&apos;t be biologically mine.
		The surgeon replied that that was the most eloquent answer they&apos;d gotten yet.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;d been a bit nervous going in, and a bit nervous as they prepared me.
		The surgery itself was fine though, and I didn&apos;t feel most of it.
		Mostly, I felt the surgeon&apos;s hands on the back of my scrotum (but not the front, as it&apos;d been numbed) and some occasional pain in a testicle when the surgeon would squeeze one a bit too hard.
	</p>
	<p>
		The surgeon saw my underwear, and said I don&apos;t even need the jock strap I brought in.
		Again, I brought the jock strap because the provided instructions told me to.
		But apparently, if you wear tight underwear, you don&apos;t need a jock strap after a vasectomy.
		I guess it&apos;s mainly for people that wear boxers.
		I prefer to keep my testicles out of the way as much as possible though, and I&apos;ve never had a desire to preserve my sperm, so it&apos;s just fine for my to keep my testes bound to my warm body even knowing it can kill the sperm to do so.
	</p>
	<p>
		The walk home was time-consuming, especially because I was walking slowly to try to be careful and not over-exert myself, but it was an easy walk.
		All that biking I do has given me a lot of leg endurance, so it really wasn&apos;t difficult at all.
		The one reoccurring thought I had was that I&apos;ve done the right thing.
		I don&apos;t regret this.
		Admittedly, getting the vasectomy was a bit of a rushed decision.
		Due to the fact that the clinic had me sign a consent form despite my admission that I was only there to get information, I actually skipped the wait time.
		They&apos;re supposed to make you wait a month between when you think you want one enough to come in and when you schedule the procedure, but I actually didn&apos;t think I wanted one until that month had passed.
		Anyway, while the vasectomy was a rushed decision, the decision not to have children most certainly was not.
		I&apos;ve known since elementary school that I wasn&apos;t going to have children.
		Back then, I believed the genetically inferior should avoid procreation, so as to build a stronger human race.
		And my parents passed genetic flaws on to me, so that made me one of the inferior that needed to be weeded out.
		Who would want my dry, cracking skin?
		Who would want my eye issues?
		Who would want my bad teeth?
		These are certainly nothing to kill yourself over, but it&apos;s absolutely cruel to pass them on to your children.
		These days though, I&apos;m not even sure it&apos;s a good idea for anyone to reproduce.
		All it leads to is more death, and the people you create all suffer that fate in the end.
	</p>
	<p>
		Every once in a while, I fantasise about being the last male on earth in an apocalyptic wasteland.
		There aren&apos;t, for example, condom factories any more.
		In all these fantasies, I either have already had a vasectomy before the world ended or I refuse to have sex with any female even once.
		Sometimes even both.
		But in any case, I always make the right decision.
		I have the power to end the human race and I use it, or it&apos;s already too late and I couldn&apos;t save us even if I wanted to.
		While I&apos;ll never be in such a situation, if I ever were, I&apos;m now prepared.
		Even as the last male, I want no part of the reproductive cycle.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I got home, my testes began to ache mildly.
		It was so slight that I wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve even been worried about it, had I not just had surgery, but the surgery made me a bit paranoid as to that something might go wrong.
		So I tried to be overly careful.
		Later, I tried icing my genitals as the instructions told me to, but that increased the pain, so I stopped.
		Hopefully the ice is just supposed to help with pain management and isn&apos;t helpful to the healing process.
	</p>
	<p>
		Eventually, the inevitable happened.
		I needed to use the toilet.
		So I removed the gauss so I could do that, and out of morbid curiosity, took a look at the incision on my scrotum.
		It&apos;s right beside my seam.
		I was told this wouldn&apos;t leave a scar, but even if it does, the placement will make it almost unnoticeable.
		I actually wouldn&apos;t mind a scar though, as it&apos;d be permanent visual proof that I&apos;d made the right choice today.
		Of course, scar tissue isn&apos;t as sensitive, so having no scar is still optimal.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<h3>Advantages of Apache</h3>
		<p>
			I got started with Apache long ago, back when I was on OS X.
			I&apos;ve learned better than to use Apple software now, but Apache followed me to the Linux world, as well.
			Apache&apos;s available on so many different operating systems.
			Because the source code is readily available, people on alternative systems tend to make the necessary changes to the code to make it compile and run on their own systems, too.
			This makes it highly portable.
			If you learn to use it on one system, you&apos;ll have it and already know how to use it on another system too.
			Having available source code also means you can modify it to your own needs if you&apos;re a programmer.
			It also means the code&apos;s been looked over countless times by countless people and doesn&apos;t likely contain malicious code.
			If it did, it&apos;d likely have been spotted and the Apache Foundation called out on it.
			Compare that to, for example, Microsoft&apos;s $a[IIS].
			No source code is available, so you don&apos;t really know what that server code is doing to your machine.
			$a[IIS] can&apos;t be trusted, while Apache can.
			To me, the biggest advantage of Apache will always be that&apos;s it&apos;s free (as in unencumbered) software, and as you can see, that advantage comes with very good sub-advantages.
		</p>
		<p>
			While we&apos;re on the topic of advantages though, Apache is also gratis software.
			You can save money by using it instead of commercial solutions.
			The Apache Foundation is more concerned with developing a robust Web server than they are in leveraging that server to make as much money as they can.
			It&apos;s also wildly popular.
			With that popularity comes a vast collection of resources.
			For example, if you&apos;re having an issue (all software has issues in some way), it&apos;s really easy to get help with Apache.
			Just try Web searching the problem, and you&apos;ll find several pages telling you exactly how to resolve it.
			It&apos;s easy to hire someone that knows how to work Apache too, if you&apos;re running a Web server for your business.
		</p>
		<p>
			Apache also has very good $a[PHP] integration.
			I&apos;ve never been able to find another Web server that integrates with $a[PHP] so well.
			I think this is more of the $a[PHP] project&apos;s doing than work done in the Apache project, but when you need things that work together, it doesn&apos;t matter who provides the integration.
			Great integration between $a[PHP] and Apache is readily available.
			There are a vast multitude of available software projects that run on top of $a[PHP], so having it on your Web server can be advantageous.
		</p>
		<p>
			Wile I&apos;d love to continue rambling on about why I favour Apache myself, we can find other advantages on the Web (ApacheBooster, 2017) as well.
			Apache is modular, so you can add new functionality that you or another person coded.
			(The $a[PHP] integration I mentioned before is provided as a module.)
			It&apos;s reliable, and performs well.
			Supposedly, it can be installed easily, but that really depends on both your system and your level of expertise.
			On Debian, you just run <kbd>sudo aptitude install apache2</kbd>.
			Super easy.
			Even a non-techy can do it.
			Trying to figure out how to install Apache on an outdated OS X system while having very little technical knowledge at the time, however, was very difficult.
			Changes made in configuration are supposedly recognised immediately without needing to restart the server.
			Again though, I question this one, as I&apos;ve always had to restart the server to get Apache to reread its configuration file.
			It&apos;s still maintained and regularly receives updates from the development team.
			Found a crippling bug?
			It won&apos;t be there for long.
			If fact, it&apos;s probably been fixed already.
			Just update to a newer version.
			Apache has great documentation.
			Apache can run host websites at once.
			However, I question this advantage as well.
			It&apos;s certainly a true fact about Apache, and I&apos;ve made use of it in the past.
			However, I doubt there exist many Web servers that don&apos;t have this feature.
		</p>
		<h3>Disadvantages of Apache</h3>
		<p>
			There&apos;s a bug in most Web browsers (Yst, n.d.) that causes them to send malformed $a[SNI] headers in certain situations.
			It&apos;s a bit obscure, and I&apos;m not going to go into details, but if you&apos;re interested, check out the page I wrote on it in the references section.
			Anyway, Apache responds to this bug correctly.
			That is, it sends an error page instead of the requested page, because the browser sent a malformed request.
			While Apache is doing things the right way and it&apos;s the browser in the wrong, it&apos;s still something you might not want to deal with.
			I mean, good luck convincing users that it&apos;s their Web browsers that are broken, not your website.
			It can be helpful to forgive the malformed request and send a valid page to users, and Apache doesn&apos;t do that.
			NGINX, on the other hand, does send valid pages despite the malformed requests.
			Friends tell me too that Apache is a bit bloated, while NGINX is lighter weight.
		</p>
		<p>
			Again though, let&apos;s see what someone more-knowledgeable (ApacheBooster, 2017) has to say on the matter.
			Apache&apos;s flexible configuration options, if used incorrectly, can open up security holes.
			I mean, there are often reasonable reasons to do something, so if Apache disabled those options, it&apos;d be less flexible.
			But Apache can&apos;t guess what else you&apos;ve got cooking and know if what you&apos;ve told it to do with your setup is safe.
			Flexibility comes with risks if you&apos;re not careful.
			The page also mentions that creating custom protocols can be unsafe and introduce bugs, but as far as I know, Apache runs with the standard protocols, not custom ones.
			You&apos;ve got to recognise which modules you&apos;re actually using and shut off the rest.
			Otherwise, you forget those modules are running and forget to keep them secure.
			And finally, Apache is a process-based server.
			I&apos;m not sure what the disadvantage of that is, but the site I read said it was disadvantageous.
		</p>
		<h2>Would I recommend using Apache?</h2>
		<p>
			Absolutely.
		</p>
		<p>
			I by no means think Apache is perfect for every last use case, but it&apos;s one of a number of Web server software options I&apos;d recommend.
			As I said before, the most important feature of Apache in my eyes is the freely-available and freely-licensed source code.
			Without available source code, you&apos;re working with a crippled and untrustworthy product.
			Any Web server software that has that available source code and is even close to being as functional as Apache gets my full endorsement.
			Additionally, Apache has always been the Web server I go to, and once I have my own Web server back up and running (I had to take it down, years ago), I plan to use Apache again.
			It&apos;s the server I use and the server I trust.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				ApacheBooster. (2017, November 3). About Apache Web server, its Advantages and Disadvantages. Retrieved from <a href="https://apachebooster.com/kb/about-apache-web-server-its-advantages-and-disadvantages/"><code>https://apachebooster.com/kb/about-apache-web-server-its-advantages-and-disadvantages/</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Yst, A. (n.d.). The $a[SNI] bug. Retrieved from <a href="https://y.st./en/URI_research/SNI_bug.xhtml"><code>https://y.st./en/URI_research/SNI_bug.xhtml</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
